A really cold night last night and the extra blanket was needed. So we didn’t rush out of bed this morning. We headed out to see the Mary Kathleen Uranium Mine, down a very bumpy old asphalt road, with potholes everywhere. We drove as far as we could, but then walked the last kilometre to the mine. The mine is just the cuttings in the side of the hill, with a large pool of inviting teal waters at the bottom, almost tropical seaside colour. But swim at your own risk, in the uranium contaminated waters. You could see some yellow coloured rocks in the cuttings, and we do wonder if that was yellow cake. Some of the surrounding hills were natural, and others were formed from the old tailings from the mine.We returned to Bridget and Matt had to do some creative reversing to get her back down the rocky single lane road, but with all his natural abilities and skill, it was very easy for him.
We were soon back onto the main road, and heading to Cloncurry, weaving through the rocky hills and ranges and it was really quite spectacular and scenic. Once in Cloncurry, Matt did his usual find the Main Street and drive through, grab as much attention as you can, and park up. He had spotted a bakery and had a hankering for a meat pie, (not sure about a hankering, as I’m not sure how to hanker appropriately, but I felt like having one)and found the steak and mushroom pie was really quite delicious. Check out the photo of the front yard of a house we walked past in the main street, Matt had been wondering why we weren’t getting barked at by the dog he had spotted…Cloncurry was a lovely town and looked loved and functional with a friendly community.
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| Cloncurry’s dogs are harmless |
From there we drove on and found the landscape changed again back to very flat grassed plains and paddocks, that the floods and rains from a couple of months ago, had meant it was not desolate and bare. There were hardly any trees or bushes, which I think is a shame. We both noticed lots of feral cats roaming the sides of the roads. We drove to the next town of McKinlay which had the Walkabout Creek Pub, made famous in the movie Crocodile Dundee. Matt was taking photos of the pub, while the tourists at the pub were taking photos of Bridget. Though, I don’t think the area is known to have crocodiles locally.
One thought that crossed my vastly empty mind while crossing these huge expanses of land over the last couple of days, is how underpopulated it is. The Barkly tablelands I’m sure are farmed, but look like they aren’t, and there are stretches that you can fit 2-3 Sydney geographical basins side by side between towns ie:2-300km with not a single residence. In fact the Tanami was larger distances, over 800km from halls creek to tilmouth well without a town on the road between them there were a couple of gold mines but not publicly accessible. Even then tilmouth well was just a roadhouse that looked like it was derelict except for the cats, and it had 3 shelves of basic groceries as long as it fitted in a tin, and it was another 180 km to Alice Springs. There is so much in this country that the bulk of people in it don’t see .
We continued on until Winton, and drove through, and will explore there tomorrow, but we headed out to the free camp area at Long Waterhole. As we pulled in, we both spotted another Clipper! Being in the national club for Clippers, you kind of all know each other, and so we knew who this Clipper belonged to and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening around the fire chatting with Don and Sandy from Victoria, and their travelling companions Ken and Patsy. Don was one of our A Team champions, who gave up his time and energies and travelled to help us on our working bee weekends to dismantle and rebuild Bridget. But of all the places in Australia to meet up, what are the chances?! The heater is definitely on tonight, to take the edge of another cool evening, after another cloudless sky and pleasant day.
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